Roshar Magic systems: Voidbinding, Surgebinding, Fabrials and the destruction of Ashyn

[kalamitous_emoashions he/him]

Hey team, 

I apologise in advance if this post isn't particularly well laid out - I have little time at the moment and a thought just struck me so I wanted to get it down before I forget about it, and I don't know if this has been discussed before or already theorized (I had a quick look and couldn't find a mention of it).

I agree with @Calderis that there are three specific magic systems that operate in three different ways. I also agree that the fused have not been Voidbinding currently.

Essentially the theory is that how magic on Roshar works is that:

A) Surgebinding is the system of magic through which the fundamental forces of nature are manipulated through the filter of Honor and Cultivation

Fabrials is the system of magic through which these forces of nature can be trapped, stored and then used (this one I am less confident about and would be interested 

C) Voidbinding is the system of magic through which the fundamental forces of nature are manipulated through the filter of odium. 

This, especially the Voidbinding postulation, I base on the WOB below.

Spoiler

Questioner

It was mentioned that there are 16 gods in your Cosmere.

Brandon Sanderson

Depends on your definition of god.

Questioner

Shards. Are the ten orders of the Knight Radiants related to specific gods? Because Honor, child of Honor-Kaladin

Brandon Sanderson

So all the magic on Roshar, all the surgebinding on Roshar, is going to have its roots in Honor and Cultivation. Um... There is some Odium influence too, but that’s mostly voidbinding, which is the map in the back of the first book.

Questioner

I was wondering how much-

Brandon Sanderson

But, but even the powers, it’s, it’s really this sort of thing. What’s going in Stormlight is that people are accessing fundamental forces of creation and laws of the universe. They’re accessing them through the filter of Cultivation and Honor. So, that’s not to say, on another world you couldn’t have someone influence gravity. Honor doesn’t belong to gravity. But bonds, and how to deal with bonds, and things like this, is an Honor thing. So the way Honor accesses gravity is, you make a bond between yourself and either a thing or a direction or things like that and you go. So it’s filtered through Honor’s visual, and some of the magics lean more Honor and some them lean more Cultivation, as you can obviously see, in the way that they take place.

Questioner

The question kind of rooted because, Wyndle in the short story is always saying that he’s a cultivationspren, he doesn’t like [...]. I kind of got the idea that each order had a different Shard.

Brandon Sanderson

That is a good thing to think, but that is not how it is. Some of them self-identify more in certain ways. Syl is an honorspren, that’s what they call a honorspren, they self-identify as the closest to Honor. Is that true? Well, I don’t know. For instance, you might talk to different spren, who are like, no, highspren are like “We’re the ones most like Honor. We are the ones that keep oaths the best. Those honorspren will let their people break their oaths if they think it’s for a good cause. That’s not Honor-like.” There would be disagreement.

Questioner

Are you saying that the spren’s view of themself influences how they work?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh yeah, and humans’ view of them because spren are pieces of Investiture who have gained sapience, or sentience for the smaller spren, through human perception of those forces. For instance, whether or not Kaladin is keeping an oath is up to what Syl and Kaladin think is keeping that oath. It is not related to capital-T Truth, what is actually keeping the oath. Two Windrunners can disagree on whether an oath has been kept or not.

Linked to this, if we consider that Voidbinding is the accessing of the fundamental laws of creation and forces (as per the quote) through Odium, then because humans were originally of odium, and we know that they destroyed their previous home, I believe that humans used Voidbinding to destroy Ashyn. 

This fundamentally would suggest that humans were the original Voidbinders. This would also tie in nicely to them being the Voidbringers. 

So to conclude quickly: Voidbinding is the accessing of the forces of creation through the filter of odium and humans were the original voidbinders who used voidbinding to destroy Ashyn. 

 

 

Edited August 14, 2018 by kalamitous_emoashions

[Spoolofwhool]

An interesting thought, but I think voidbinding is Roshar, and since magic systems are the result of a shard's power interacting with the world, this means that for voidbinding to have been used on Ashyn, it would've had to have been brought there from Roshar and used. 

Edited August 15, 2018 by Spoolofwhool

[kalamitous_emoashions he/him]

Three points to counter the argument that Voidbinding is solely of Roshar:

1. We have already seen that magic systems go beyond just Roshar within the Rosharan system. There is something funky/cognitive shadowy that happens with the Heralds and the Fused involving Braize, so is it that much more of a step to consider that Ashyn, which is simply on the otherside of Roshar to Braize, (go check the Arcanum Unbounded Rosharan system map if you can't picture what I mean) would have been unable to have Voidbinding acting upon it. 

2. Magic systems can operate outside of their home world within the Cosmere - we have already seen evidence of this in Stormlight regarding the use of Breaths, Allomancy, potentially Hemalurgy, and a host of other things through Mraize. 

3. Have you got any definitive proof that states that Voidbinding originated on Roshar? Brandon has kept particularly quiet on the topic, and given that magic systems are developed through shardic intent (either a shard acting alone, or together with another shard) this would suggest that Voidbinding being 'of Odium' makes more sense and has more realmatic theoretical evidence than Voidbinding being 'of Roshar'. 

So I guess it boils down to the fact that: We have seen magic in the Rosharan system interact on multiple planets simultaneously, we know that magic can be used across world in the cosmere and lastly from evidence across the Cosmere generally we can be fairly certain I believe (Someone show me a WOB of me being wrong if I am) that magic systems are more linked to Shards than they are merely of the physical planets. 

 

 

[Magpro]

I think Void is a term for Odium related. Dawnsinger not knowing properly assosiated Humans with Odium, as Odium came to Roshar shortly after Humans came, and they probably mentioned they dealth with Odium.

The way i see Odium behaving, is he goes to a planet, and minuplates its magic and peiple to his goal. He saw the Dawnsingers as a betrayed people and used them and gave them access to voidlight to power surges. These surges got named voidbinding, and made the Dawnsingers the firsr voidbinders

I believe on Ashyn, Humand used a differnet magic provided which destroyed the planet. They may have been beguiled by Odium to act that way.